"If I had one wish, it would be to sing"
Almost everyone would like to sing.
Donna Menthol can help you find your voice and deliver a song in a six-week course that is progressive and fun. Join us in these great sessions and prepare to be astonished as your singing capabilities develop. Instructional methods are combined with the art of improvisation in an environment that is innovative, safe and enjoyable.
We will explore:
- Developing a positive vocal identity - find your unique voice
- Creative exercises to free the voice and spirit
- Discovering personal goals to develop your singing
- Using the voice to develop self-confidence
- Healing and cleansing aspects of vocalization
"Donna is a powerful vocalist who has many theories about the voice and its relationship to the inner soul"
-Miami Herald
Email for appointments alteredsouls@earthlink.net or call (512) 442-3921.
I give Zoom vocal sessions !
Here is a recent review...
I was driving to my first voice lesson in over a decade… I found a voice teacher who I knew from our first meeting would meet me right where I was coming from. She goes by Donna Menthol and is not caught up in a clinical, academic progression that makes a person into a singer. She likes to get in there with me and explore the symbology that is contained within a voice. She is interested in all of the demons that hide inside my vocal chords so that I can relax and let them go away.
There have been so many metaphors that live right there in the voice. So many things where problems are symptomatic of my way of experiencing the world. On day one we were doing a panting breathing exercise where she called my attention to the fact that I was expending more air than I was taking in and then she used the analogy of putting on your own oxygen mask before you help other people. And in that one behavior is drawn the person who can run a company for ten years with my name even on the door and sublimate my own need for oxygen the entire time. As a result, I have otherworldly lung capacity…but eventually…you have to take a breath or you are going to die.
She keeps using the analogy that even a hair's difference can get you from the place you want to be. Singing is the greatest Zen practice I have ever had the opportunity to experience. It's not this forcing and grabbing control, it's the masterful driving of one's most subtle resources to make something that is perfect. Today it felt like making an object spin like a top in the air using telepathy. It occurred to me in a completeness: I am the person with the full power to make that happen. Anything that is going to happen with my voice, it will happen absolutely by my decision and my action alone. The power was tremendous and like flying. The self-assuredness that came from losing any inkling that another person had any greater power to make me sing was revelatory.
Every day I discover a habit that I have used to hide behind and not allow my natural voice to thrive. It is ironic that, as a protection, to appear strong, I have hidden that voice, a voice that is inherently powerful at its most natural. It is thrilling to allow myself to lay those things bare and to sound bad on the path to sound good. I trust it, I trust my teacher, and I trust myself.
-Trey McIntyre
treymcintyre.com